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Evidence Commons

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Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Evidence

The Personhood Argument Against Polygraph Evidence, Or "Even If The Polygraph Really Works, Will Courts Admit The Results?", James R. Mccall Jan 1998

The Personhood Argument Against Polygraph Evidence, Or "Even If The Polygraph Really Works, Will Courts Admit The Results?", James R. Mccall

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Character At The Crossroads, Roger C. Park Jan 1998

Character At The Crossroads, Roger C. Park

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Hearsay, Dead Or Alive?, Roger C. Park Jan 1998

Hearsay, Dead Or Alive?, Roger C. Park

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Substantial Assistance And Sentence Severity: Is There A Correlation Substantial Assistance, Ian Weinstein Jan 1998

Substantial Assistance And Sentence Severity: Is There A Correlation Substantial Assistance, Ian Weinstein

Faculty Scholarship

How much more severe are sentences imposed in districts with low substantial assistance rates than those in which the rate is very high? In the aggregate, not at all. At first blush this may puzzle readers because substantial assistance (SA) departures are very unevenly distributed across districts and SA accounts for nearly two-thirds of all downward departures, almost 7,900 of the 12,000 in fiscal 1996. Although this pattern could result in gross disparities among districts, my analysis of inter-district sentencing patterns reveals no statistically significant correlation between the rate of SA departures and the average length of sentences imposed in …


Conflicts Of Interest In Scientific Expert Testimony, Mark R. Patterson Jan 1998

Conflicts Of Interest In Scientific Expert Testimony, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

Conflicts of interest have significant implications for the reliability of scientific expert testimony. However, the courts' treatment of conflicts is not always in accord either with the treatment of conflicts in scientific practice or with the particular problems that scientists' conflicts present in court. In response, this Article proposes two basic changes in the treatment of scientific expert testimony. First, courts should strive to separate issues of bias from issues of scientific validity-the two sets of issues are now conflated at times. Second, courts should pay more attention to biases of scientists who perform the research underlying expert testimony, whereas …